Cosmic Symphony
by SweetTale4u
Summary: Dark, Alternate Universe, Hermione is intent on saving Severus. Armed with a time turner she sets out on her never ending quest. Maybe today will be the day...maybe...One Shot. Rated M for gore and language.


He didn't know why he survived the end of the war. The killing blow issued by the Dark Lord had been a blessing in disguise as far as Severus Snape was concerned. Giving his memories to Potter would be enough to assure that he had kept up his end of the bargain, protecting Potter. As he lay bleeding out on the floor of the Shrieking Shack he thought back to all he had done in his life and welcomed death like a long lost friend.

He was a peace.

That peace didn't last long.

The bright lights and bustling sounds of a muggle hospital was all he could manage to hear. Nurses and doctors calling for something called a 'crash cart' followed by blissful silence was all he could remember.

* * *

"Where is he?" she looked around the dirty and blood stained shack. Dammit she was too late….again. Pulling the long chain from its resting place deep in her bosom she turned the small hourglass and tried again.

"You need to make sure you do it right Hermione, how many times can you expect to go back?" Harry asked his head buried in a book. "Your calculations are wrong Hermione, just admit it, there is no way you can possibly save him," Ron mumbled over a plate of breakfast in the cozy cottage Hermione had purchased with her Order of Merlin award.

"I don't understand why I'm not getting there on time, each and every time I go back I find the shack empty." Running a hand through her bushy hair she leaned against the counter as if struggling to find the strength to even stand. She had been through this countless times and each time she came up empty. She needed to save Severus; he was the key to everything and she knew if he had left her these instructions, she could do it.

"I cannot risk going back earlier; you know what he told me about stopping his memory transfer, it must happen exactly as it does," Hermione said almost to herself. The boys, while there in body were long gone in spirit. They had tried for months to help her succeed. Each time she came back empty handed.

"What does that book say again Harry?"

"It says that causes will always happen before effects, never the other way around. Something will always prevent the paradox Hermione; there is no way that you can save Snape, not if the reason you are going back it to save him. His death is the catalyst to your time travel, not the other way around. Think of it this way, Dr. Cooper told us that had "Snape" not died, you would not be going back in time ergo, the reason you cannot save him."

"Yes but that Dr. Cooper sounded like he was a bit unhinged."

"I liked him, he seemed quirky," Ron smiled as he pulled another book towards him, this one on parallel universes. A lot of people thought Ron was daft or some kind of idiot but in reality, he was extremely intelligent. He was just lazy, it was a lot easier to have Hermione do his homework then spend long hours poring over parchments when he could have his face buried in Lavender's tits.

"He was an idiot! Who talks like that?" She knew the American doctor was not an idiot she was just at her wits end.

"I'm going to try again."

"Hermione you should rest, you've tried five times today. You're going to run yourself ragged," Harry protested as he readied the kitchen in the small cottage for dinner.

"One more time Harry, please."

"Fine, remember the protocols, always remember the vials."

"Yes, of course."

Pulling the chain again she turned it in the necessary pattern to travel the extended amount of time and to where she wanted to go.

* * *

She must have not been paying attention; it must have been because she was so tired.

"Who are you?" the wand was pointed at her back. _Shit, I fucked up, _she thought to herself.

"Can I turn around or are you going to blast someone in the back? Doesn't seem very fair does it?"

"Give me your wand. Then you can turn around," the deep voice spoke, poking her rather hard in her lower back to accentuate his words.

"There is no way I am going to give you my wand so you might as well stun me now!" Hermione was too tired to care at this point.

"You have quite a mouth you on for someone so small. I'm going to ask you again. Who are you?" He punctuated his words again by pressing the wand harder into her back.

_Fuck this, she didn't have time for this shite!_

Before she could pull the chain again to spin the dial, she was turned and pushed up against the dirty wall of the shrieking shack. She looked to see the stranger's wand now at her throat and two dark eyes staring at her.

_Severus_

Wait, this couldn't be. He looked so much younger. She must have gone too far back.

"Listen, relax, there is no need to get upset. I am with the Ministry. Routine mission." She tried to sound official but at the same time relaxed, he seemed so on edge. He was sweating profusely, his robes seemed soaked through and his hair even more bedraggled than normal. He was clearly trying to maintain a disillusion charm but it seemed to be fading. Suddenly there were noises coming from outside.

"Sshh! Keep quiet!" He pushed her back towards a hidden alcove behind a dusty tapestry and held her close to his side.

Someone shuffled into view. Hermione could not make out who it was but a shrill cry made her move to see more clearly who had entered the shack.

Louder growls and ripping noises as well as a sharp intake of breath from Snape confirmed what she already imagined. Hermione poked her head from behind the tapestry where she could see Remus Lupin ripping his school robes off as he transformed. The only light in the small room was the light of the full moon.

_Shit, shit, shit_

"Keep quiet Snape," she whispered as she leaned around him and tried to aim her wand at Remus. Before she could get off a spell, the newly transformed werewolf ripped the tapestry away and lunged itself at the already surprised Snape.

"Remus! Stop this right now!" Hermione shouted at her old professor and friend as he knocked out Snape. Shaking her head she blasted Remus with a stunning spell.

"There, that should take care of that. I have to go." Hermione turned and with one last look at the two laying on the floor she decided it might not by wise to leave Snape there especially since she could see some blood trickling down his forehead.

Waving her wand she levitated the younger Snape out of the shack and out towards the grounds of the school. She healed his head and cast a strong cleansing spell over his entire body. She didn't know how long he had been in there but she was sure it had been at least a day by the looks of his robes. She took this rare moment to look over the younger version of the man that had come to mean so much to her, to their future. He still looked a lot like he had as an adult, granted there were a lot less stress lines on his alabaster skin. But as always, Hermione was mesmerized by his features. Even the younger version made her stomach do flip flops, he was gorgeous. Lily Evans had been an idiot in Hermione's opinion, but alas what was done was done.

She moved away from the young Slytherin and sent her patronus towards the castle asking someone to come and recover Snape as well as to tend to Remus. To believe that Dumbledore would allow him to transform in such close proximity to the school was disconcerting. Dusting herself off she turned back towards Snape and with one last glance she spun the hourglass again.

Landing with a soft thud she looked around the deserted cottage. The lamps were out and she could see that Harry and Ron had left. Lighting the hearth she barely had time to settle onto the sofa before she passed out from the stress of the day.

* * *

"Where am I?" Severus managed to whisper as he came to. He didn't know how long it had been since he had been rescued after Nagini's attack.

"Shh…you need your rest. Please don't try to speak," answered a kindly old nurse that was busying herself with Severus' chart.

"How long have I been here?"

"Well it looks like you are going on 8 months Mr. Lazarus."

"Lazarus? I think you're mistaken."

"Don't you worry yourself about it; memory loss is a very common side effect of a coma."

Severus had no time to answer as he found his mind slipping again into that blissful darkness.

"That's right, time to sleep some more, seems you aren't quite ready to wake up yet." With a whispered spell the nurse was gone in a crack of white robes as the room fell into darkness again.

~~~~~~~~~HG/SS/HG/SS~~~~~~

Her head was pounding. She needed some coffee and two headache potions. There was no way that was going to happen without her wand.

Waving her hand she waited and waited yet nothing came to her.

Even trying to open her eyes was causing her pain.

'_That's it, no more time travel until I brew some more pain potion.'_

Hermione padded to the loo only to find that there was nothing there, no paper, no towels, it was barren. Looking around the rest of the cottage in the light of day she was able to see what she failed to see the night before. None of her belongings lined the walls; there was no furniture except the threadbare sofa that had been there when she moved in.

She frantically walked around trying to figure out what had happened.

Pulling her robes around her tightly she apparated to the Burrow.

~~~~~~~~~HG/SS/HG/SS

The burrow looked as it always did. It was her first foray into what a magical home was and it would always hold a special place in Hermione's memory. As she walked up to the door she immediately realized that there was a problem.

The door for the main house was ajar and upon further inspection Hermione could see that the house was abandoned. The sink had dirty and from what she could smell rotting food on them. It looked like who ever had been there had left in a hurry. Casting a spell to show if anyone was in the house, she ran frantically towards the topmost room where she pulled on the back panel behind Ronald's bed to find the pensive that Molly kept hidden for emergencies and stuck her head into the swirl of memories.

A few moments later Hermione lay on the floor of the room, disheveled and sweating. She had thrown up the little that had remained in her stomach from the night before; tears now stained her face as she pushed her errant curls from her face.

'_It can't be! This isn't possible! Voldemort is alive?'_

Turning on her heel, she apparated away from the burrow towards Hogwarts.

~~~~~~~HG/SS/HG/SS

"Where is she mate? She has never been gone this long," Ron said as he paced the small sitting room of the cottage. Hermione had been gone for hours; Harry immediately knew something had gone wrong. He knew she was too tired to have pulled off that last time jump. Pulling the books they had been researching he began to pull pages of parchment and time charts. He had to find Hermione. She was lost. He knew this could happen. Dr. Cooper had mentioned something about time travel and the possibility of not only paradoxes but also the other theory which posited that when you traveled backwards in time you might wind up in an alternate dimension of time. If Hermione had somehow wound up there, she would most likely be lost to them forever. Hermione had argued for hours with Dr. Cooper via the muggle telephone, he had seemed reluctant at first to listen to her 'theories' of special energy that could make time travel possible. However, after getting permission from the ministry of magic they were able to tell Dr. Cooper that they had access to magic. There had been a brief pause on the telephone and what sounded like a loud thump. Another of Dr. Cooper's associates and wife, Ms. Benet had said that Dr. Cooper had fainted but that she would make sure her husband called them back at his earliest convenience. A few hours later using Hermione's laptop they had spoken to Dr. Cooper and his beautiful wife Penny about the existence of wizards and they had been very enthusiastic about helping Hermione. However it was with strict warnings that Dr. Cooper advised against the possibility of traveling backwards in time. He said paradoxes could not be avoided but the possibility of creating an alternate reality or winding up in one could happen. Hermione had argued further that this wasn't possible, that time was a strict progression from point A to Point B.

"Give me today's Daily Prophet Ron," Harry called out from behind a stack of parchments.

Harry had already read the days' news but he scanned the articles for any changes, any notes showing something may have changed. There was nothing different. Harry ran outside, looked around the area and everything remained the same. The only difference was that Hermione was gone.

"Ron! Ron! Get Dr. Cooper on the computer."

"Mr. Potter, how can I help you?"

"Dr. Cooper, we have a problem."  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was chained up to a wall. What little clothing remained on her body was bloodied and soiled. There was not an inch of skin that wasn't torn or scarred. Most if not all of her teeth were missing, blood fell lazily from the corners of her now deformed mouth. Her hair was matted and tangled, her body emaciated and wasted. She was but a shadow of her former self. No more tears would come, nothing to eat or drink for days, she would die soon.

She welcomed death with open arms.

The shadows in the corner stood waiting and watching. They waited for her, they caressed her wounds, and they held her in the cold night. Soon, very soon it would be over they whispered. She wanted to believe them but yet again another sunrise and another sunset and still she clung to nothing. There was no hope. The darkness had won and she had lost. They had taken her lover, her friends; she was all that was left.

So they toyed with her. They battered and abused her. Out of the darkness there came a crack of apparition. It wasn't possible. The castle was protected against it yet there she stood. Her mouth gaping as it often did. She looked at herself, her clean and pristine robes, her skin so beautiful, and her hair back to its beautiful and glorious state. She had always loved her hair, it didn't matter what they thought, and she loved each and every bushy and untamable curl. She sighed at the ghost of her former self even as it moved towards her, kneeling in the blood she had shed earlier.

Caramel eyes full of compassion and a sweet tenderness Hermione had long forgotten.

"What have they done to you?" The spirit asked her voice soft and faint. She lifted her head to look upon the apparition that softly caressed her bruised face, pointing her wand as if to cast a healing spell, Hermione gasped and begged her not to.

"Please…don't spirit. They will know you are here."

"I'm not a spirit."

"You must be, you must be one."

"I'm not," The stranger, her doppelganger lifted up the golden chain and hour glass and showed it to her.

She would have laughed had she the energy. There was no way this was her, no way the girl that stood before her was from her future. She had no future. It had to be a ghost.

"You cannot be me," she coughed and spit more blood onto the floor. Her arms hung at a strange angle from having been chained up to the wall for so long. Her legs barely held her up and she was sure that her shoulders were dislocated from her last beating.

"What year is it?" The doppelganger asked.

"It's 2002; at least it was when I was captured."

"That cannot be! We won the war. How is this possible?"

"I will let you see it all if you promise me one thing spirit."

"I'm not a spirit, but let me help you."

"There is nothing you can do for me. I am already dying."

"No, that isn't possible. Let me take you out of here, let me heal you and get you help. You can come with me."

"I cannot go with you spirit. You know that isn't how it works."

"What can I do? Tell me, I will do anything."

"I need you to help me die."

"What?! I can't do that. I won't, I can fight, and we can run. Please don't ask me to do that, I can't!"

"Spirit, listen, look at my memories and you will see why I cannot leave, why my time is over, why it must end with me. Hurry, we might not have a lot of time once you use the spell."

The doppelganger pointed her wand at Hermione and whispered the spell the allowed her to dive into the murky waters of this Hermione's mind.

_She stumbled into the shrieking shack. Straight into the confrontation between Voldemort and Snape, she began firing spells. Harry and Ron jumped out from their hiding places only to be caught by Lucius and Mulciber. They were children; they were no match for seasoned Death Eaters. They had been so wrong to think a few days of practice in the Room of Requirement would be enough. How very wrong they had been. _

_The memories swirled and she found herself in the same room she was in now. Harry, Ron, Severus and Hermione were all chained up against the walls of the dungeon. The door opened and in walked one of the Lestrange brothers holding Neville's decapitated head by his hair. _

"_See mudblood, that's what you get when you go against the Dark Lord."_

_Hermione screamed as the head of her friend rolled towards her feet, his face frozen in a grimace of horror. _

"_You are fucking animals! Just end it already!" She could hear Snape yelling at the death eaters as they repeatedly punched and kicked Hermione. The tortured screams from Harry and Ron as the death eaters repeatedly violated her, the anguish in Snape's cries as he begged them to take him instead of her, to let her go. _

_The doppelganger almost fainted at the sight before her, she vomited onto the stone floor as the memories began to swirl again and she watched as death eaters disemboweled her two best friends, the way they raped their dead skulls, laughing at her cries to end it, to kill her. She wasn't granted reprieve. She watched as they tortured and killed Severus. His last words to her were cut off as a death eater dug a hole in Severus' head rendering him mute, his body seized and he was raped and tortured until he finally died. _

_The doppelganger watched the way they desecrated his remains and left her there for weeks with their decomposing remains. The stench became unbearable and the death eaters had no choice but to make her clean it up. She lovingly cradled what was left of their bodies to her bosom, crying for all they suffered. She cried for her own release from this mortal coil. Her magic had been taken from her, a potion they made Severus brew before they killed him. Voldemort had never graced the males with his presence but had allowed Nagini to feast on the remains of her friends. The snake could barely slither away with a belly full of order members. _

_It was a living nightmare. _

"_How have you survived this?" the spirit doppelganger whispered. To this the memory Hermione motioned to the corner. There in the shadows were Severus, Harry, Ronald, Neville, Luna and Draco all waiting. She watched as they would come to her in the night and whisper their support. How it would all be over soon, to just let go. How they would cradle her as she sobbed and dry heaved. The thing was, as much as she tried to die, she couldn't. The Death Eaters healed her just enough to keep her alive. _

"Please spirit, you need to help me die. I do not belong in this world anymore. They've taken everything, let me at least beat them at this, let me control my own demise spirit, please don't deny me."

Hermione watched as this other Hermione, the spirit, paced the length of the stone cell when she exited her mind. She saw her struggle with the request.

"Not here, I won't let you die here."

She wrapped her arms around the woman's thin frame and pulled her close, the stench of madness and death clung to her very soul, turning once on the spot she was gone.

Setting the woman down onto a clearing the Forbidden Forest, Hermione pushed the matted hair from the girl's gaunt face.

"Thank you, but you must hurry; they will know I am gone. They will take you too."

"Shhh…it's okay." Hermione said as she held the small woman's frail hands. Her breath was labored and she struggled to breath in the night air.

"I'm ready."

With a flick of her wand two long gashes opened on the girl's wrists.

The blood and tears of happiness flowed from the once insufferable know it all.

"Thank you, spirit. Thank you for freeing me."

From the darkness of the Forbidden Forest the spirits of her loved ones descended on her and lifted her from the tortured shell of her body. As Hermione wiped the tears of sadness from her eyes she looked up to see a beautiful and stunning version of herself she had never seen before. It was full of love and happiness as she embraced Severus' spirit. His arms wrapped around her held her close as he whispered in her ear. She smiled and turned to her friends who welcomed her with open arms. With a look back towards her savior she smiled and walked off into the forest.

She didn't have time to mourn the girl.

The cracks of apparition and the swirl of robes had her turning to find she was being surrounded by Death Eaters. They were clad in stunning white almost incandescent robes, their masks red and gold. It was a sick reminder that she was not anywhere near where she should be. Throwing up a shield to protect her from her would-be-attackers she spun the hourglass and was gone.

_One of these days she would get it right….one of these days she would save Severus…one of these days. _


End file.
